The defeat of the Home Rule Bill by a majority of thirty came on June 8th, and the General Election followed. [Footnote: See Morley's Life of Gladstone, vol. iii., p. 337, which gives one o'clock on the morning of the 8th as the time of decision. Sir Charles's Memoir contains among its pages an article from Truth of October 14th, 1908, marked by him. The article, which is called 'The Secret History of the First Home Rule Bill,' states that Mr. Gladstone's language did not make clear that the proposal to exclude Irish representatives from the Imperial Parliament was given up. Mr. Chamberlain, who had made the retention of the Irish members a condition of giving his vote for the second reading, left the House, declaring that his decision to vote against the Bill was final. The Life of Labouchere, by Algar Thorold, chap, xii., p. 272 et seq., gives the long correspondence between Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Labouchere prior to this event.] Sir Charles voted for the Bill.
'On July 5th I was beaten at Chelsea, and so left Parliament in which I had sat from November, 1868.
'The turn-over in Chelsea was very small, smaller than anywhere else in the neighbourhood, and showed that personal considerations had told in my favour, inasmuch as we gained but a small number of Irish, it not being an Irish district, and had it not been for personal considerations should have lost more Liberal Unionists than we did.
'Some of my warmest private and personal friends were forced to work and vote against me (on the Irish Question), as, for example, John Westlake, Q.C., and Dr. Robert Cust, the learned Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, and Sir Henry Gordon—General Charles Gordon's brother—who soon afterwards died, remaining my strong friend, as did these others.
'James wrote to Lady Dilke, July 26th:
'"No one but your husband could have polled so many Gladstonian votes. London is dead against the Prime Minister."'
Mr. Chamberlain wrote of his deep regret and sympathy that the one Ministerialist seat which he had earnestly hoped would be kept should have gone. He pointed out that the falling off in this case was less than in other London polls; but the reactionary period would continue while Mr. Gladstone was in politics. If he retired, Mr. Chamberlain thought the party would recover in a year or two.
There is a warm letter from Mr. Joseph Cowen of Newcastle, who wrote:
'Chelsea has been going Tory for some time past, and only you would have kept it Liberal at the last election…. If you had not been one of the bravest men that ever lived, you would have been driven away long ago. I admire your courage and sincerely sympathize with your misfortunes…. I always believed you would achieve the highest position in English statesmanship, and I don't despair of your doing so still.'
For a final word in this chapter of discouragement may be given a letter from Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, who wrote from a detached position, having been prevented by illness from standing both in 1885 and 1886: